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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/23363905">Needless</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/xpityx/pseuds/xpityx'>xpityx</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>The Expanse (TV)</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>F/F, Podfic Available</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2020-03-28</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2020-03-28</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-01 11:28:51</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>Mature</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>No Archive Warnings Apply</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>1</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>1,009</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/23363905</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/xpityx/pseuds/xpityx</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>Inners had nothing to give the Belt, all Belters knew this.</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Relationships:</b></td><td>Camina Drummer/Naomi Nagata, Jim Holden/Naomi Nagata, Minor or Background Relationship(s)</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>19</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>41</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>Needless</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
      <p>Thank you to <a href="https://slumberoustrash.tumblr.com/">SlumberousTrash</a> for the beta. To my regular readers: there's a 13K Witcher/His Dark Materials crossover coming soon.</p>
    </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p><br/>
<br/>
</p><p>
  <span>The Station smelt like ester grease. Everything did: the food, the clothes, the people. It got under your nails and in your hair where it picked up dust and turned into a black tar that you could probably smoke if you didn’t much like your lungs. Camina heard that when Inners came up to the Belt for the first time their snot turned black and they coughed day and night. </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>It made her smile to think about it. </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>Weak, that’s what they were, with their soft skin and soft hands, hoarding things to themselves because they were too afraid to share. Her mama had been quarter Earther, and how proud she’d been of that. Putting on an accent and using words no-one in the Belt knew or cared about. It had got her nothing, in the end. She’d died of lung rot just as fast as anyone else. </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>Inners had nothing to give the Belt, all Belters knew this. Then she’d come to Tycho and seen that maybe, if you truly loved the Belt, you could understand it well enough to be one of its people. Fred Johnson loved the Belt, Julie Mao had loved it too. </span>
  <em>
    <span>They</span>
  </em>
  <span> were Belters, willing to sacrifice anything for their people.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>Holden though, he was a fucking idiot.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>He was the kind of man who would tell you to calm down and talk things out while someone stood with a knife to your throat. Worse, he was dangerous: a man with a warship who thought he knew better than you. She didn’t know why Fred hadn’t pushed him out of an airlock yet. She’d offered to make it look like a painful accident. </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>She couldn’t understand what a true Belter like Naomi saw in the self-righteous sack of shit. He wasn’t even strong: Camina was sure she could bench press more than him. It didn’t matter, in the end. Naomi had decided she would have both of them: her fierce Belter and her stupid Inner, and who was Camina to deny her that?</span>
</p><p><br/>
<br/>
<br/>
<br/>
</p><p>
  <span>The knock on the door to her quarters was unexpected. She’d disassembled the door comms years ago to stop idiots from coming to ask her questions when she was off-duty and, after that had not dissuaded them, she'd answered the door with a gun. It hadn’t taken long for word to get around: she was not to be disturbed when she was in her quarters. </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>Naomi raised an eyebrow at the gun when she opened the door, but stepped inside readily enough when Camina gestured for her to come in. It was the same space she’d had since she’d joined Fred all those years ago: she didn’t need a big berth to show people she was in charge, and all she did in there was sleep and fuck anyway. Naomi took two steps forward and ran out of space, dropping down onto the rusty chair Camina used to keep her feet down when she did sit ups. </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>“Hey,” Naomi said.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>“Hey yourself,” Camina replied, holstering her gun and sitting on the bed, which was the only other seat in the room.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>“How’s the wound?”</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>“Good. How d’inyalowda you fly wit?”</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>“Good.”</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>“That enough small talk, keyá?” </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>“Soyá,” Naomi agreed, and slid from her chair to the bed where Camina pulled her into a kiss. </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>They kicked off their boots—Camina’s jumpsuit easier to get off than the thing Naomi wore: too many zips and pockets. They were familiar enough to each other to know what they liked, but they saw one another infrequently enough that there was still the thrill of the new. Camina had always liked the chase better than the end result, but Naomi hadn’t gotten boring yet. </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>She liked that Naomi laughed when they fucked, that she never took herself too seriously. Even when Camina couldn’t find her strap-on, or they lost their lube under the bunk, Naomi took it in with a smile. </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>“You do that every time,” she commented, as Camina stubbed her toe on the wall and swore.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>“You’re too tall,” Camina complained, “makes your pussy too far away.”</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>“I’m the same height as you,” Naomi laughed, which turned into a moan when Camina got to where she’d been going. </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>Afterwards they lay together, sweat cooling in the constant flow of recycled air.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>“You stayin?” Camina asked, even though she knew the answer already. Naomi always stayed when she was on Tycho. </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>“Yup,” Naomi replied, without opening her eyes.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>Camina rolled off the bed and got up to rummage in a drawer. She kept her quarters tidy, but she’d put this particular thing away some time ago.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>“Xiya,” she said once she’d found the folded piece of silk, throwing it in Naomi’s general direction.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>“It’s a silk pillow case,” Naomi commented, catching it and holding it up to the thin light that filtered through the outer viewport.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>“You say your hair snag on the kaka ones.”</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>“I know what I said but where did you</span>
  <em>
    <span> get</span>
  </em>
  <span> one?”</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>Camina snorted, sliding back into bed as she did so.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>“Tô pensa people say no to me?”</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>“Taki taki,” Naomi said, putting it on her pillow and lying back down in the narrow space between Camina and the wall. </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>Camina had wondered if she should finally agree to the bigger quarters that Fred had been offering her for the last five years or so, but she’d decided that would be perhaps suggesting something a little more permanent than things between her and Naomi really were.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>“Im ta nating,” she said, dismissing Naomi’s thanks. “Sleep seta,” she added, and the shitty central computer system considered the command for a handful of seconds before killing the lights. </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>She thought again of a larger bunk as she slid into sleep—of sunlight through high windows, like she’d seen in films. Even in her half-awake state she dismissed it: Belters needed no luxury, not when the space would be better used by another, not when the distant stars were enough to light the curve of Naomi’s shoulder: dark against the darkness. </span>
</p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>On <a href="https://xpityx.tumblr.com/">Tumblr</a> for fandom and anarchy, <a href="https://twitter.com/xpityxfanfic">Twitter</a> for writing updates.</p></blockquote><div class="children module" id="children">
  <b class="heading">Works inspired by this one:</b>
  <ul>
    <li>
        <a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/26812753">[PODFIC] Needless by xpityx, read by Spinifex</a> by <a href="https://archiveofourown.org/users/Spinifex/pseuds/new%20fanfiction%20radio">new fanfiction radio (Spinifex)</a>
    </li>
  </ul>
</div></div></div>
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